Amazingly tiny, stylish design. Good sound quality. Handy travel case charges it without having to use a power cord.

Cons

Falls out of ears during active use. Short battery life.

Bottom Line

The Samsung WEP200 wins major style points for its small, sleek design, but its high "fall out" factor is a big drawback to animated chatters.

The Samsung WEP200 ($89.99 list) looks good enough to turn headsor at least it would, if it weren't so compact that it often goes unnoticed. Why, it's even tiny enough to satisfy Derek Zoolander's phone fetishes.

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Pairing the WEP200 to three phones (the Samsung SPH-A900, Nextel i580, and RAZR V3c and a laptop was a snap. Well, at least it was once I figured out that one superlong press is enough to turn on the device and make it Bluetooth-discoverable. This small (1.5 inches long) and light (0.3 ounces) headset doesn't use an ear hook. Instead, you select one of the three included earbud cover sizes (small, medium, or large) to fit it into your ear. It doesn't completely cover the ear canal, but rests there fairly comfortably once you get it situated. This approach renders the WEP200 quite liable to fall out of your ear during active use, but the trade-off is that it feels as if it's hardly there at all.

One main multifunction button handles all features: Bluetooth pairing, On/Off, call answer/hang-up/reject, voice dialing, and redial. Two tiny volume buttons on the side make it easy to adjust volume with your thumb, without removing the headset from your ear.

Although the WEP200's mic is located farther away from your mouth than those of more traditional Bluetooth headsets such as the Jabra BT500, our voice sounded more lifelike and present than with many other models. In our wind test, we sounded fine to the person on the other end (except during big gusts, as one would expect), although the WEP200 did pick up a bit of background noise.

The WEP200's range was excellent, possibly because of its Bluetooth 2.0 connectionalso a contributor to its small size (Bluetooth 2.0 manages battery power more efficiently than do versions 1.1 or 1.2, allowing for a smaller battery). We were able to stand well over 30 feet from a phone on the other side of a wall, and the sound was relatively clear for both parties.

There is another trade-off with the small, light design: short battery life. The WEP200 offers only three days of standby or 4 hours of talk time. Recharging the headset is simple; just drop it into its little black case (which connects to your power outlet), and contacts inside the case connect with contacts on the earpiece when the case's lid snaps shut. This means you don't have to fuss with connecting a wire each time you want to charge the device, which is a nice plus.

Samsung WEP200

Samsung WEP200

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